ProfessorFinola O'Kane Crimmins

Director

The Selection Panel provided the following comment on your work: “This is a beautifully produced, original, thoroughly researched, erudite study. As well as making an important contribution to scholarship in landscape studies, the book represents a significant contribution to the very vibrant field of transatlantic studies (America, Britain and the Caribbean) by integrating Ireland into that nexus of ideological and economic exchange. Very ambitious in scale, it is highly sophisticated in its conceptual approach and demonstrates Professor O’Kane’s mastery of interdisciplinary research. She is extremely skilled in her construction of a coherent overarching framework (the Atlantic world), weaving together explorations of designed landscapes in the era of England’s Glorious Revolution (1688), the American Revolution (1776), the Irish rebellion (1798), and the French Revolution to address a fascinating question – how did new republics and revolutionaries, having overthrown social hierarchies, translate their principles into spatial form? She addresses that question in a very comprehensive, persuasive, stimulating way, demonstrating an outstanding mastery of landscape design, and of how design and property structures reflected and (most interesting of all) sometimes contracted the abstract revolutionary concepts of plantation, improvement, liberty, equality, and colonialism. Among the very many commendable features of Professor O’Kane’s study is her exposure of Irish involvement in the enslavement of black people, expertly illustrated in her fascinating account of one Irish man, Pierce Butler. More generally, her exploration of themes through case studies of individual revolutionaries lends valuable granularity and interest to the study.”

Irish Architecture Awards Public Space Category Awarded to: Cork County Council CPIU Architects with Scott Tallon Walker Architects and Professor Finola O'Kane

Awarded to Cork County Council CPIU Architects with Scott Tallon Walker Architects and Professor Finola O'Kane

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Elected member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA)

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the author of a book published within the past three years on a subject pertaining to landscape studies. There are no restrictions with regard to period, topic, or author's nationality. Only books based on original research and those that break new ground in method or interpretation will be considered. The purpose of this prize is to reward contributors to the intellectual vitality of garden history and landscape studies. The jury considers each submission on the basis of its success in expanding the field to new areas or increasing knowledge within an existing branch of the discipline. It seeks to support authors with an ability to write for a general readership as well as for a scholarly audience.That Ireland is picturesque is a well-worn clich�, but little is understood of how this perception was created, painted, and manipulated during the long 18th eighteenth century. Finola O'Kane's book positions Ireland at the core of the Picturesque's development and argues for a far greater degree of Irish influence on the course of European landscape theory and design. Positioned off-axis from the greater force-field, and off-shore from mainland Europe and America, where better to cultivate the oblique perspective? This book charts the creation of picturesque Ireland while also exploring in detail the role and reach of landscape painting in the planning, publishing, landscaping, and design of Ireland's historic landscapes, towns, and tourist routes. Thus it is also a history of the physical shaping of Ireland as a tourist destination, one of the earliest, most calculated, and most successful in the world.

Finola O'Kane's book explores the role of Ireland as a place for the development of the picturesque. She argues that Ireland, more than any other place, was a British theater for experimentation in politics, farming, philosophy, aesthetics, and tourism in the 18 century. As a study of both the Irish landscape and the reception of it, the beautifully produced volume is an excellent addition to the scholarship on the picturesque in landscape architecture and its sister arts of painting and architecture.

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The prize is awarded to a distinguished book that has made a significant contribution to the study and understanding of garden history and landscape studies.Finola O'Kane, Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland; Mixing Foreign Trees with the Natives, Cork University Press, 2004